


Eldritch, betentacled Bridstow

by Naraht



Series: A thousand thousand slimy things [1]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: AU - Tentacles, Angst, Body Horror, Body Modification, Eldritch, Eventual Fluff, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Self Harm, Tentacles, Thinly Veiled Allegory, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:00:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The Charioteer</i>. Now with added tentacles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eldritch, betentacled Bridstow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> You asked for it...

"The many men, so beautiful!  
And they all dead did lie;  
And a thousand thousand slimy things  
Lived on; and so did I."  
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_

 

"I won't ever be able to go without the glove."

"No," said Alec, a fruitless monosyllable of sympathy.

He gave another glance at Ralph's left hand, unable to avoid imagining the misshapen, mutilated flesh concealed beneath the simply cut black leather. He wondered whether Ralph had let anyone else see it, or whether this small, unwanted piece of intimacy bound them together still.

"Dr. Mansell did the surgery, you know," he added, though he knew it made no difference. "I was just assisting."

"If any of it comes off, I shan't blame you."

"They won't come off," said Alec. "I can tell you that."

He remembered the scene in the operating theatre. Ralph's smashed hand, almost bloodlessly pale, spread out on the surgical drape like a dying starfish washed up beyond the high tide line. The surgical nurse wheeling in another gurney, the jar sitting on it so thick that one could only dimly discern through the greenish, filmed glass the faint movement of a white tentacle within. The suturing, delicate and painstaking, had seemed to take hours, while the tentacles lay limp and apparently lifeless, the brine in which they had floated soaking remorselessly into the drape. 

_And now you should see them starting to perfuse_ , Dr. Mansell had said at last. They had waited for long minutes to see the faintest blush of blood beginning to creep back into the new flesh as Ralph's body, unconsciously generous, made it part of his own. 

Alec had wondered, even at the time, whether Ralph would not rather have died on the table.

"No," said Ralph. "I suppose they won't."

There was a long silence.

"You hadn't a choice in the matter," Ralph said finally. "No more than I did. Don't have it on your mind."

And yet they both knew perfectly well that it always would be. Though Ralph might have survived the operation, Alec doubted that their friendship would.

***

"You know you're meant to exercise them," said Bunny petulantly. "It's the very first thing I said in the course."

"You hadn't any idea what you were talking about," said Ralph. 

Once upon a time it would have been an affectionate grumble. No longer.

"But it's true," Bunny insisted. 

"Not like that. It's perverted."

"My dear, you're a queer with three tentacles where you should have fingers, how much more perverted can you be?" Bunny laughed, as though he could not have thought of anything more amusing. "You'll have them for the rest of your life, you might as well enjoy them."

Ralph shook his head. "Naval issue as far as I'm concerned. Not for use ashore."

"You're just saying that because you can't get them up. Sometimes I think you're _trying_ to pickle them in gin."

It was not that far from the truth. Drink enough and his extremities began to go faintly numb, blotting out the queer sensations of nerves grafted to alien flesh. Drink enough and they could not longer betray him. Drink too much—legless, paralytic—and he lost all control of them. What was worst was that he welcomed it.

"Boo," Ralph said slowly, "do you _want_ me to hit you?"

"Why yes," said Bunny. His manner was so exaggerated that one could never tell—and perhaps this was exactly the point—whether he was joking or not. "I thought you'd never ask!"

"Get the hell out," said Ralph.

***

Andrew's mouth was set in grim disapproval. "It's wrong."

"If it's what they have to do to win the war..." said Laurie.

"It doesn't matter," he insisted. "It's inhuman, taking wounded men without their consent and turning them into, into monsters."

And nothing Laurie could say could convince him otherwise.

***

"My dear, do you _know_ what he's got under that glove? Strictly _entre nous_ , Bunny spilled everything eventually. And he's on a _course_ to learn how to use the darlings, as if simply having them weren't enough! Personally I think it's very selfish of him not to share. Practice makes perfect, you know."

Laurie sat bleakly on the sofa, unable to look at the officer who had delivered this confidence, wondering what on earth had possessed him to come to the party. How much Ralph must have changed since his schoolboy days.

***

The bath was full of blood. For a moment that was all Laurie could see. 

A tentacle, big as a man's wrist and sliced half through, lolled out of the bath onto the carpet.

"They're tough," said Ralph. "It would take more than that."

Laurie did not ask how he knew. He noticed with a shock that Ralph had taken off his glove; hoisting the naked Sandy out of the bath, his tentacles adhered familiarly to the slippery skin, gripping with ease where his bare right hand could find no purchase. All of a sudden Laurie realised what the point of it all might be to the Navy.

He did his best not to stare at Sandy's pathetic nakedness, or at the tentacle which grew from just under his right armpit and flopped nervelessly against his thigh. By contrast Ralph's left hand was deft and graceful, the three tentacles that stood in for fingers only slightly longer and thinner than they ought to have been. If it had not been for the faint pink lines of healing flesh ringing each finger, one would hardly have known where the join had been achieved. There was a disorienting naturalness about the effect, as if something in Ralph's inward nature had secretly welcomed the graft.

"They were hoping to make a better surgeon," said Alec to Laurie confidentially. "Sandy wasn't the one to try it on; I could have told them that much."

***

The night after the wedding seemed as if it were made for confession.

"It didn't take," said Laurie. "It didn't—I couldn't ever stand. It was less than a month, and I was feverish for a fortnight of that. They brought me back into surgery eventually and took it all off."

"You were lucky," Ralph replied.

"Was I?"

"It's better not to know," said Ralph gently. "Don't worry about it."

But Laurie could not help remembering those days of pain. How impossible it had seemed to believe that this thing had happened to him, how his visiting mother had kindly averted her gaze from the shape under the bedsheets, unwilling to accept what had now become a part of her son.

He slept, then, fitfully, half awakened from time to time by the crackling of the fire.

When he opened his eyes once again it was the small hours of the morning. Ralph was sleeping still. His face radiated a sense of peace with the world; it was only now that Laurie realised he had never seen such contentment from him before. 

Ralph's glove was off, as it had not been earlier in the evening. His left hand was thrown back on the pillow and the tentacles moved almost imperceptibly, insinuatingly, of their own accord. Perhaps he was dreaming. 

There was a faint pulsation that reminded Laurie, watching with a sense of creeping horror that probably had something to do with the hour, of Coleridge: _a thousand thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I_.

It was of that sight that he found himself thinking the following day, inescapably, when he told Ralph that he could not live with him.

***

_Epilogue: some months later_

There was a small tickle of suckers against the back of his neck; another tentacle curled comfortingly around his ear, while a third stroked his cheek.

"Oh, Spud," murmured Ralph, nuzzling against him. "Spuddy."

Laurie shut his eyes and let himself be lulled by those queer caresses. The feeling of them was beginning to become familiar; more than that, it was one which he associated with Ralph alone.

A pause. The tentacles withdrew. "I'm sorry," said Ralph, his voice quietly rough. "I forget myself sometimes."

"But I liked it," said Laurie slowly, a reluctant admission. "Don't stop."

It was the first time with Ralph that he had ever felt the necessity of putting his desires into words. But if this were corruption, this life with Ralph, then corruption was something to be treasured.

"Spuddy, my dear," said Ralph again and embraced him, tentacles and all.


End file.
